WPP Group media agency network GroupM named Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser to helm its North America business, Ad Age’s Alexandra Bruell reports. "It reflects the direction we're going in in terms of our data and technology and driving that business forward on the back of the investments we made recently," said GroupM’s global president, Dominic Proctor. "Now we're bringing it in line with our management strategy." With the promotion, Brian Gleason takes over as CEO of Xaxis globally. More.

Ad Blocker Buys Ad

The Israeli ad blocker Shine took out a full-page ad in the Financial Times on Thursday depicting Muhammad Ali towering over Sonny Liston, with a barb for the IAB (and an antagonistic new site page). In an email to Business Insider, IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg responded in kind, saying Shine is funded by foreign interests “for the express purpose of stealing money from advertisers and publishers and diverting it into the pockets of giant cell phone carriers.” Shine’s danger to publishers doesn’t stem from its aggressive paid media, it comes from network-level ad-blocking deals the company has with mobile carriers. (Only Digicel has publicly acknowledged implementation, though Shine claims there are others.) Rothenberg signed off with the final note: “I hope they buy millions of dollars of more advertising before they die.”

Facebook’s Brick-And-Mortar Play

Facebook announced two new shopping product features on Thursday, each aimed at helping local businesses. The first enables businesses with multiple locations or branches to format ads and deals for individual locations (for instance, directing someone to the nearby cafe, with a specific deal). Facebook will also now provide general demographic and audience data about the people it can identify around the store, tracking foot traffic trends and potential customer segments. Read the blog post.

Programmatic Video Percentages

Tremor Video’s revenue grew 26.2% year over year to $49.3 million in the third quarter, with programmatic now totaling 35% of total revenue. For the first time, Tremor broke out programmatic, nonprogrammatic (what it calls “higher-function” offerings like its all-screen solution) and media network revenue, its legacy business that’s declining as more budgets move to programmatic. Tremor has signed 250 publishers to its new supply-side solution and cited a new contract with Dentsu-Aegis trade desk Amnet on the buy side.The earnings. And, YuMe also reported.

The Redwoods

New research from Forrester, Gartner and IDC all point to massive expansion in a few tech sectors. Steve Lohr of The New York Times writes that “cloud computing is fast becoming the fundamental technology engine in corporations,” tripling to a $500 billion sector by 2020. It’s not all sunny skies though, as the reports also indicate a painful consolidation. “The candidate survivors included Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, IBM and two Chinese companies, Alibaba and Tencent,” with Apple as another entry. More.